‘NASA is wrestling with a potentially dangerous problem in a spacecraft, this time in a moon rocket that hasn’t even been built yet.
Engineers are concerned that the new rocket meant to replace the space shuttle and send astronauts on their way to the moon could shake violently during the first few minutes of flight, possibly destroying the entire vehicle.
“They know it’s a real problem,” said Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor Paul Fischbeck, who has consulted on risk issues with NASA in the past. “This thing is going to shake apart the whole structure, and they’ve got to solve it.” [..]
Professor Jorge Arenas of the Institute of Acoustics in Valdivia, Chile, acknowledged that the problem was serious but said: “NASA has developed one of the safest and risk-controlled space programs in engineering history.”‘
.. that last comment means almost nothing when engineering history has so few space programs in it. 🙂
‘A police siren that can’t be ignored.
Police in Oklahoma are excited over a new piece of equipment called the “Rumbler.” It is a very loud siren – so noisy that drivers will be able to feel their seats vibrate from the sound.
The low tone is also surprising many drivers – making them look up and pull over.
“It’s a deeper tone than the normal,” says driver Abby Ross.
And you don’t just hear the Rumbler, you feel it.
“A little bit, just a little bit. A little vibration in the seat and the car, not a big difference but enough to know they’re back there,” adds driver Don Balente.
And that’s exactly why Tulsa Police bought them. Officers say, even with their lights on and sirens blaring, drivers don’t notice their patrol cars.’
‘Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.
The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.
Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces.’
‘First I got 3 dead harddisks. A small one that used to be my Amiga’s, a normal sized one, and a bigass ancient one. I did this just for the fun of saying I have a harddisk sound system with woofer, midrange, and tweeter drivers ;). I ripped the drives apart. I took sound (in electrical signal form) from the output jack of my sound card. I fed it through a Velleman 30 watt audio amplifier that I bought from Parts Express here and soldered together. I took the amplified signals and fed them through the coil that controls the movement of the HD drive heads. I also connected the amplified signals to the platter motors of the ‘midrange’ and ‘tweeter’ drives, so you can actually see the platters spin sometimes. I determined which places to connect the wires by studying the drives and poking wires around in random places. Hey… they were dead anyway. Anyways, the sound that is being produced is from the rapid vibrations of the heads/platters due to the ‘sound’ signals passing through them. With lower frequency sounds being passed through the drives, you can see the heads move quite a lot. For the high frequency ones, its invisible to our inferior human eyes. This kind of fun isn’t just limited to harddisks… I also got low frequency sounds to come out of an electric motor, and even standard cooling fans will make some sound. Girls can try even making music come out of their vibr… *cough*… The 3 harddisks are connected to the amp in parallel. It’s like ghetto raid with groove ;)’
‘We wanted to make a catapult that could destroy a car with bowling balls from at least 80 feet away, throw fireballs, and be controlled through a computer vision system so it could be aimed from a laptop. Result? Success.’
(9meg Flash video)
see it here »
Far2Paranoid: Knew this guy in HS
Far2Paranoid: Built a box with 2x 350Mhz Pentium2, back in ’98
Far2Paranoid: The trick was, filled his bathtub w/ glycerin
Far2Paranoid: Took apart a mini-fridge and used the coils to cool the glycerin to ~40F
Far2Paranoid: Then sunk the box so he could OC the CPUs to 1.3Ghz
Far2Paranoid: Coolest shit I’ve ever seen.
AlbinoChpmnk: If this was sitting in his tub, how did he shower?
Far2Paranoid: After what I just said, what makes you think he showered?
I don’t know what they’re saying, but the sign speaks for itself, I s’pose. 🙂
(3.9meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘A Polish teenager allegedly turned the tram system in the city of Lodz into his own personal train set, triggering chaos and derailing four vehicles in the process. Twelve people were injured in one of the incidents.
The 14-year-old modified a TV remote control so that it could be used to change track points, The Telegraph reports. Local police said the youngster trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. The teenager told police that he modified track setting for a prank.
“He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to manoeuvre the trams and the tracks,” said Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz police. [..]
“He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but it was lucky nobody was killed. Four trams were derailed, and others had to make emergency stops that left passengers hurt. He clearly did not think about the consequences of his actions,” Micor added.’
‘The Pentagon’s newest laser weapon has a peak power of more than a million megawatts, so intense that it warps the air around it. When the beam strikes the target it vaporises the impact site, producing a plasma fireball and a highly destructive shockwave.
The end result: a tiny crater barely visible to the naked eye.
That’s because the so-called “laser crazer” is designed not to burn up missiles or tanks, but to scratch lenses. It’s a portable nonlethal weapon designed to take out enemy optical systems at long range — ruining an adversary’s night-vision gear, sniper scopes and binoculars in a fraction of a second — by sandblasting their lenses with ultrashort pulses of laser light.’
‘Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.
A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.
In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation “was halted due to untimely payment,” the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government’s most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.
“We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,” according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.’
‘from 1915 onwards these huge eerie concrete structures started popping up along the uk coast, all built with one purpose: to provide the military with an early warning system in relation to incoming aircraft. their construction was pretty much limited to the uk and arrived just before radar technology as we know it became widespread.’
‘The boy wanted his father to look at his Xbox 360 video game system.
The father didn’t want to. An argument ensued.
The boy handed his father a rifle. Shoot me, he said.
So the father did.
State police at Fern Ridge say that scenario played out Friday night between 60-year-old James Stanley Niedosik and his 17-year-old son.
The boy ended up in Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull behind his ear. Niedosik ended up in Monroe County Prison on $250,000 bail, charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child.’
‘A 32-year-old Californian whose rental car got smashed by a Metro-North train last night was issued a minor summons for causing the fiery crash that stranded railroad commuters for hours.
Bo Bai, a computer technician from Sunnyvale who said he was merely trusting his car’s global positioning system when he steered onto the tracks, was cited for obstructing a railroad crossing, officials said this afternoon. [..]
“As the car is driving over the tracks, the GPS system tells him to turn right, and he turns right onto the railroad tracks,” said Brucker. “That’s how it happened.”
Brucker added, “He tried to stop the train by waving his arms, which apparently was not totally effective in slowing the train.”‘
‘You can’t deny I’m full of ideas. After doing 5 earlier attempts at getting shadowless light onto a macro scene, some good, some bad, this is yet another approach: fiber optics. I haven’t seen many people try this. [..]’
‘I used to be in the Navy, stationed on an Aegis-class guided-missile cruiser. One day at sea, I’m taking a break on the flight deck (which was just behind the rear Aegis radar array), and I noticed all these dead birds all over the flight deck. It didn’t take me too long to realize that these birds had flown in front of the radar and been microwaved to death.
This gave me an idea. I figured if it works on birds, it should work on popcorn. A microwave’s a microwave, right? So, the next time we pull into port, I go to get some microwave popcorn.’
‘Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe — ninety-six billion planets — into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment’s silence he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.” [..]’
‘A little girl thought she was getting an iPod for Christmas but ended up getting a rude surprise. She got the box but when she opened it up, she found a surprising switch: the iPod had been replaced with a bizarre note.
The note reads in part “Reclaim your mind from the media shackles.”
Jay Ellis, the girls father, returned the ipod to the Germantown, Md. Wal-Mart store where he purchased it. The store manger told him that another customer returned an iPod with a similar issue.’
‘SUMMARY
During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play “Fur Elise” or “It’s a Small, Small World” seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer’s BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.
MORE INFORMATION
Although these symptoms may appear to be virus-like, they are the result of an electronic hardware monitoring component of the motherboard and BIOS. You may want to have your computer checked or serviced.’
‘Carol, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of making herself or her land a target for vandals, called for help recently when she arrived at some vacant property she owns in east Austin and found her security chain gone.
She grabbed her new Casio G’zOne phone from Verizon Wireless, which to her horror made an audible alarm when she called 911.
Fearing vandals were still on the property, she hung up and hid, then put her hand over the earpiece and dialed again to muffle the sounds.
“I was afraid the criminals were down the driveway and they would hear and they would know somebody was doing something and they would come out to stop me,” she said.
The alarm is not ear-splitting, but it is loud enough to be heard at least several yards away.’
‘This time I went for chip wood board to get it straight and stable. I also used a 4 layer glass. Two outer layers of 3mm float glass and two inner layers of 3mm plexi glass where the image were engraved. I had to use plexiglass as it conducts light way better than normal glass.’
If I had one tho, it would probably being a glowing goatse door. Because goatse is always funny. 🙂
‘back in the 1920s george bennie designed and built the railplane, a propeller-driven monorail initially intended to travel between glasgow and edinburgh.
the design was way ahead of its time, the railplane capsule home to a 4-blade propeller at each end, each of these powered by its own electric motor – the result a cruising speed of 120mph.’
‘A new antenna made of plasma (a gas heated to the point that the electrons are ripped free of atoms and molecules) works just like conventional metal antennas, except that it vanishes when you turn it off.
That’s important on the battlefield and in other applications where antennas need to be kept out of sight. In addition, unlike metal antennas, the electrical characteristics of a plasma antenna can be rapidly adjusted to counteract signal jamming attempts.
Plasma antennas behave much like solid metal antennas because electrons flow freely in the hot gas, just as they do in metal conductors. But plasmas only exist when the gasses they’re made of are very hot. The moment the energy source heating a plasma antenna is shut off, the plasma turns back into a plain old (non conductive) gas. As far as radio signals and antenna detectors go, the antenna effectively disappears when the plasma cools down.’
‘Two-photon (2-P) microscopy offers several advantages for biological imaging – in particular for non-injurious imaging of dynamic cell behaviors deep within intact tissues, organs and even the living animal [Cahalan et. al., 2003, Stutzmann et al., 2005]. However, its widespread adoption for such applications has been hindered by two factors: commercial 2-P microscopes are very expensive, and they typically acquire images at frame rates too slow to resolve many biological processes. Both of these problems may be circumvented by building your own 2-P microscope!
[..] The object of this web page is to gather together all the information you should need to build your own 2-P microscope.’
‘The Storm worm is fighting back against security researchers that seek to destroy it and has them running scared, Interop New York show attendees heard Tuesday.
The worm can figure out which users are trying to probe its command-and-control servers, and it retaliates by launching DDoS attacks against them, shutting down their Internet access for days, says Josh Korman, host-protection architect for IBM/ISS, who led a session on network threats.
“As you try to investigate [Storm], it knows, and it punishes,” he says. “It fights back.”‘
‘The National Defence Force is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday. [..]
Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have,” he said. “It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers.” [..]
During the shooting trials at Armscor’s Alkantpan shooting range, “I personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says. “They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the polls down.”‘
‘Bill Gates met God, and God said, “Well, Bill, I’m really confused on this one. I’m not sure whether to send you to Heaven or to Hell. After all, you enormously helped society by putting a computer in almost every home in the world, and yet you created that ghastly Windows. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to let you decide where you want to go.”
Bill Gates said, “What’s the difference between the two?”
God said, “It might help you decide if you took a peek at both places. Shall we look at Hell first?”
Bill was amazed. He saw a clean, white sandy beach with clear waters. There were thousands of beautiful men and women running around, playing in the water, laughing and frolicking about. The sun was shining and the temperature was perfect. “This is great!” said Bill. “If this is Hell, I can’t wait to see Heaven.”
see it here »
‘This project involves restoration of a rather rare breed of machine. Very few steam-powered motorcycles are known with the majority of historic “steamcycles” residing in museums (e.g., the “Field” steam motorcycle). There has been very little commercial exploitation of applying steam power to two-wheeled vehicles, so most “steamcycles” that come to light are one-of-a-kind prototypes built by hobbyists and steam enthusiasts. The steamcycle restored here is no exception. It was custom built by Arthur “Bud” Hubbard of Monroe, CT during the early 1970’s.’
‘The Storm worm first appeared at the beginning of the year, hiding in e-mail attachments with the subject line: “230 dead as storm batters Europe.” Those who opened the attachment became infected, their computers joining an ever-growing botnet.
Although it’s most commonly called a worm, Storm is really more: a worm, a Trojan horse and a bot all rolled into one. It’s also the most successful example we have of a new breed of worm, and I’ve seen estimates that between 1 million and 50 million computers have been infected worldwide. [..]
Worms like Storm are written by hackers looking for profit, and they’re different. These worms spread more subtly, without making noise. Symptoms don’t appear immediately, and an infected computer can sit dormant for a long time. If it were a disease, it would be more like syphilis, whose symptoms may be mild or disappear altogether, but which will eventually come back years later and eat your brain.’
